


Demeter:Goddess of the harvest

by Stellabella



Series: Olympus High [4]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-20
Updated: 2012-11-20
Packaged: 2017-11-19 02:52:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/568250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stellabella/pseuds/Stellabella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hey. I’m Zeus. You might know me as the king of the gods and leader of all Olympus. And trust me I wish I could be, but unfortunately right now the only thing I am king of is the prom. Yeah, I’m a high school student. Yeah, it pretty much sucks. The Oracle told me to start a little diary about all my future subjects. Apparently the more I know them the easier it will be to rule them when I get older. So here we are, welcome to the inner workings of Olympus High.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Demeter:Goddess of the harvest

Now Demeter is a great girl, not my type, but a great girl. She’s down to earth and caring, but she can be a little too much of a granola girl sometimes. She gets really angry if you don’t finish your vegetables, she actually takes it as a personal offense. Demeter is the goddess of the harvest and a massive hippie/activist; she sometimes sneakily swaps the school’s slushies with wheat grass shakes. Man, those things are disgusting. But she is a pretty good kid; she spends most of her time tending her little garden with her daughter and best friend Persephone.  
The tale of the wet nurse  
Demeter doesn’t spend a lot of time as the subject of school gossip. We often forget she is even there. The one time she was really shoved out into the lime light was when her daughter, Persephone, was kidnapped by Hades. During this time, she travelled the world in search of her beloved daughter. During her travels she went on many interesting adventures. One of the strangest things to happen on her journey was the time she babysat for a mortal.  
It all started out when she was wandering through a city she had never been to. Demeter didn’t look too good. Her normally luscious brown hair was frayed and dry. Her green eyes no longer sparkled brightly, and she had massive dark bags under them. She slumped over to the centre of the city and flopped onto the base of a massive fountain. She sat there and sobbed into her oversized hoodie for a while. The mortals wandering back and forth through the town square glanced at her worriedly every now and then. No one had the slightest idea that they were staring at the once great goddess of the harvest. Night started to fall and Demeter was still sitting by the fountain with her knees pulled up to her chest. The square began to empty out until she was the only person there, weeping silently into the gushing fountain.  
Suddenly, two mortals rushed into the square. Their hair was a mess and their dresses where covered in tiny handprints. They looked around wildly and finally settled their wide eyes on Demeter. They looked skeptically at each other, nodded, and rushed forward. They grasped Demeter by each arm and pulled her up to a standing position.  
She looked at them with a baffled expression and quickly wiped the tears from her cheeks. The two girls took a deep breath and spoke in hurried unison. “We really need some help. We thought looking after our little brother while our mom was away would be easy, but it is so totally not! We can’t handle it anymore; we need an actual baby sitter.” Demeter looked at the two sisters, still completely confused by all this. “And how exactly can I help?”  
“Well you kind of give off that dowdy mother vibe. So we thought you might know what to do. We know we don’t actually know you or anything, but you don’t really seem like a serial killer. So are you up to the job? We will totally pay you so don’t worry.” The two girls replied, in perfect sync. Demeter looked around bemused. She was about to tell them who they were dealing with, when she stopped. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad just looking after a baby like a regular mortal. Maybe she could spare a couple hours just to relax and enjoy some quality time with a nice kid. She made up her mind and told the sisters. They were overjoyed and they both grabbed her hands and dragged her out of the square.  
Demeter was dragged along by the chatty girls until they reached a huge house in the most bustling area of the city. The two sisters skipped up the large marble steps and stopped just outside of the massive wooden doors. Demeter stood for a while, just taking in the enormity of the house. She was used to palaces and temples, but this mansion in the middle of the city was simply gorgeous. She stumbled up the stairs and wandered through the enormous doorway in a daze. If the outside of the house was beautiful, that was nothing compared to the inside. The tiled floor had been polished and waxed to perfection. The soaring ceilings were supported by towering marble columns. The beautiful spiral staircase wound around a massive book case that seemed to contain a first addition of every single book ever published. 

 

But the true masterpiece of the house was the massive fireplace that nestled on the far wall. It was made from polished white marble and it had an impossibly intricate grate made of twisting steel vines. The mantle was carved with the same twisting vine pattern and it shone so brightly it seemed to give off its own light. High on the wall above the fireplace hung a beautiful oil painting. It depicted the two sisters in matching white dresses sitting in front of a beautiful older woman and a kind looking man in a suit. The woman, supposedly the mother, had one arm draped gracefully through the crook of her husband’s arm, and in the other she held a swaddled baby. The family looked so happy, so whole, that Demeter had to choke back a sob thinking about her own daughter. The two sisters waited patiently at the top of the stairs, they were obviously used to awestruck visitors. Finally Demeter tore her eyes away from the painting and ascended the staircase. She followed the sisters through the corridors until they reached a small door. The sisters moved either side of the door like ushers in a movie theater. “Welcome, to the nursery.” They opened the small door and light flooded the hallway.  
The nursery was better than anything she could ever have imagined. The walls were colored a beautiful light baby blue. The room was filled with natural light from the massive bay windows that overlooked the bustling street. Demeter stepped into the room and looked around in awe. Finally her eyes settled on an intricately carved wooden crib. She moved slowly over to it, and lying inside was the most adorable baby she had ever seen. He rolled over to stare at her with his big, warm, brown eyes, and Demeter almost squealed with delight. She had to stop herself from reaching into the crib and swinging the baby around the room. The two sisters stepped lightly over to the crib and stood awkwardly by the baby. It was obvious that they had no idea how to handle a child. So Demeter took it as an invitation to pick him up. She leant over the crib and plucked the chubby baby out. He looked at her and his face transformed. His eyes narrowed, he knit his brow, and his bottom lip started to quiver. The sister covered their ears with their hands; they were clearly used to the baby bursting into tears.  
But Demeter stared back into the baby’s eyes, stuck her tongue out and blew a massive raspberry. The baby’s face lit up. It started laughing and imitating Demeter’s silly faces.  
The two sisters looked at each other, slowly took their hands off their ears and smiled. “You have no idea how much we need you around.” Demeter smiled back at them and rocked the baby back and forth, bouncing slightly. The baby gurgled and grasped at the strings of Demeter’s deep green hoodie. The sisters knew that they had found the right complete stranger to look after their brother. They showed her around the nursery and explained where everything was. Then they walked down to the front door of the house. “Well if that’s all you need, we are going to head off. We want to get a couple of shopping hours in before mom gets home.” The girls sprinted out of the door and skipped down the road yelling “We’re free! We’re Free!”  
Demeter shut the door with one hand and jiggled the laughing baby up and down with the other. She and the baby spent hours together, playing games, taking naps, and generally having fun. Eventually Demeter decided that she wanted to give the baby a gift that it would appreciate forever. What was something that she could give him as a goddess that no mere mortal could? After a while she decided upon immortality. Everyone loves immortality. She looked around the house for something that she could use. She finally settled on the massive fireplace. Making someone immortal is a tricky procedure and there are many ways to do it. But Demeter knew that one of the easiest ways to do it with a baby is to set it on fire. Basically the instructions are:  
1\. Acquire baby.  
2\. Put baby in fireplace.  
3\. Light fireplace.  
4\. Remove baby after an hour.  
5\. Repeat steps 2-4 for 7 nights straight.

Demeter set the laughing baby down in the fireplace after making a little play pen out of logs. The baby giggled and rolled over onto stomach. Demeter went to the kitchen and got a lighter and some gasoline. She dowsed the play pen in gasoline and set it ablaze. Luckily for Demeter the fireplace had brilliant smoke control so the room didn’t fill with the black smoke that was roaring up the chimney. The baby crawled around the fireplace, unaware that it was currently burning alive. Demeter crossed her legs and sat down in front of the grate, making hand motions and silly faces to distract the baby. They continued on like this for an hour. When the hour reached its end Demeter reached in and lifted the baby out of its blazing crib. She snapped her fingers and all traces that the fire was ever there disappeared.  
Demeter wandered up the spiral staircase rocking the now tired baby back and forth. She reached the nursery and placed the baby safely in the crib. Just as she set the sleeping baby down, the doorbell reverberated loudly throughout the house. She rushed downstairs and opened the door to greet the mother and the father. They had just gotten back from their party and the two sisters had texted them that they had gotten a babysitter. Demeter smiled when they told her how hard it was to get their son under control. She told them that she had just put him to bed and that she would be happy to come back tomorrow to help again. The parents were ecstatic and offered to let her stay in the guest room while she was babysitting for them. Demeter thanked them profusely and the three went off to bed.  
The next few days passed by without trouble. Each morning she would wake up, dress and feed the baby, and take him out to the park. And each night the family left to some social occasion and she set the baby on fire. This routine worked great right up until the seventh night. The family had left the house as usual and Demeter had just lit the fireplace and put the baby in. She got a little hungry so she walked over to the kitchen. Just at this moment, the family walked into the house. They had missed the end of the party because it had gotten very boring. They stepped into the foyer and started to smell the smoke.  
They looked around, wondering who had lit the fireplace. The mother walked over to it scolding herself for not telling the babysitter not to touch the expensive fireplace. When she finally reached the other side of the room, she screamed. The father and the sisters ran over to her side. The mother stood rigidly, pointing straight into the fireplace. The rest of the family turned slowly to look at the thing that had frozen their mother in fear. When the sisters saw their brother rolling around in the middle of the fire, they fainted straight away. The father leapt into action. He grabbed the fire tongs and gingerly lifted the baby out of the fire. The mother grabbed him as soon as he had left the fire, not fearing the heat. She cradled him to her chest and wept as the baby gurgled happily.  
At this point Demeter had finished making her whole wheat veggie sandwich. She wandered out of the kitchen with crumbs all down her hoodie. The mother turned to stare at her, narrowed her eyes and yelled. “You! How could you let something like this happen? We go away for half an hour and when we come back the baby is on fire! I am calling the police, this is unacceptable!” Demeter was confused for a moment, but then the realization dawned on her. These people were accusing her of putting their son in danger. “Don’t you know who I am you insolent mortal? I am Demeter, goddess of the harvest and the spring. I was blessing your son with eternal life, and you have ruined the whole thing. I demand a tribute to calm my wrath.” Demeter was suddenly towering above the entire family. She stared down at the shivering mortals and demanded that they build a place for her to rest in the center of town. The family immediately called up the mayor and explained their predicament. The shrine was built incredibly quickly. And Demeter immediately sat down in it and sulked. But in all honesty it wasn’t really a shrine. It was more of a bus stop with a picture of Demeter stuck to the side. But hey, it’s better than nothing right?


End file.
